Vertical payments company Flywire has announced the acquisition of Simplee, a healthcare technology platform, to optimise the digital payments and patient engagement experience in the sector, scaling its global payments services.
The acquisition builds on Flywire’s growing healthcare payments business and accelerates the company’s market share.
Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire commented: “Flywire is uniquely built on a global payments network, which is the cornerstone of how we move billions of dollars across 200+ countries and 150 currencies, and an industry-leading payments platform.
“This digital foundation enables us to develop vertical-specific applications that make payments more efficient and cost-effective for our global clients. The Simplee acquisition improves patient engagement and healthcare affordability and extends these capabilities to a broader customer base.”
Along with the acquisition, the firm is also announcing a $120 million Series E investment round, led by Goldman Sachs. The funding will contribute to Flywire’s balance sheet and provide additional capital to support the company’s vision to digitise payments across its key verticals, including education, healthcare and travel.
“We are thrilled to lead the Series E round for Flywire”, commented Ashwin Gupta the managing director at Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division.
“They bring together a unique blend of a payments network, platform and vertical-specific solutions to completely digitize the payments experience for their clients across industries. We look forward to continuing to help accelerate Flywire’s growth.”
Bolstered by new digital capabilities, global payments revenue is expected to grow at a 5.9% CAGR from 2019-2028 to become a $2.5 trillion industry by 2028, according to Boston Consulting Group.
Flywire’s acquisition of Simplee accelerates the digitisation of payments to address the challenges around patient engagement as well as healthcare finance and affordability.
Combining Flywire’s high-tech platform for providers with Simplee’s consumer-first paths to payment, both patients and providers are empowered to settle payment faster and on their own terms. Together, the companies will power four of the top ten US healthcare systems and process more than $10 billion in patient payments per year.
Expert Analysis: Bringing payment innovations and technologies to the health sector can be key in improving patient engagement, utilising the tool of new payment technologies is simply an opportunity that can’t be missed by the health sector.
